Supercourse Newsletter, April 7, 2004
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Dear Friends:
Iranian Epidemiologist teaches Pittsburgh Students!!
Last week was considerable fun. During the past few weeks we
have gotten to known Ali Ardalan, M.D. who is a graduate student
in epidemiology at Tehran University. Eric Noji got us in touch
with Ali as Ali as an epidemiologist investigated the Bam Earth-
quake. During our graduate class in International Health we de-
cided to do something quite different. One of the major problems
of teaching International Health is that it is difficult to
bring in outside speakers. Flying Ali from Iran is prohibitive
as the University of Pittsburgh shall we say is a little bit
"frugal" (another synonym is cheap).
We wanted to try something with the Supercourse, to have Ali
teach our students but not have it cost US$ 1,000s. Ali created
a lecture on epidemiology and the Bam earthquake. It was out-
standing. If one wants to learn about earthquake epidemiology,
Ali�s lecture, Eric Noji�s and Tom Songer�s are the most out-
standing series and available on the Supercourse.
Ali sent to us his lecture, then we called him at 3:30 Pitts-
burgh time (11:30 Tehran time). He then presented his lecture to
my students over the telephone with Soni running the computer.
My students were hugely impressed to learn about the Bam Earth-
quake by an epidemiologist in Tehran. Ali�s talk was very beau-
tifully constructed, and we all learned very much. It was also
wonderful how our students interacted with Ali. It was almost as
good as having him in the room and a lot less expensive.
We are thinking of extending this approach by running a course
next year where by we bring in many others from across the world
to teach. Thus the first week we could have Eugene Shubnikov
from Russia, the second week Ali, the third Yang Ze from China,
the Fourth Rania Saad from Cairo, the fifth Pablo Aschner from
Columbia, etc.
Also, we might consider identifying a group of speakers who
would be willing to do something similar in your country. Thus
Faina could present over the Telephone in Nepal, Vint Cerf in
Georgia, etc. We could also have multiple classrooms set up with
Nigel Paneth presenting simultaneously to students in South Af-
rica, France and Argentina.
Ali is writing a short article for publication with us concern-
ing "cost-effective" distance education as I think we have a
means to achieve this. Please let us know if you would like to
try this, as it worked so well we could not believe it. It also
was great to have our epidemiology students in Pittsburgh to get
to develop friends in Iran.
Best regards from Pittsburgh,
Ali, Faina, Ron, Mita, Eugene, Soni, Eric, Abed, Rania, Tomoko,
Akira
mailto:super1+@pitt.edu